The last discovery of scientists: the afterlife and the kingdom of Morpheus border on each other. Belief in the existence of the soul and, accordingly, in life after death is amazingly strengthened.
Moreover, it is acquiring an almost scientific basis in our age of high technologies. People are beginning to compare themselves to computers - information carriers. Soul - with this information itself. Imagine that she does not disappear after physical death. And in some way unknown to modern scientists, it is formatted and sent to the "Universal Server", which the backward ancestors dubbed the afterlife.
Scientists do not get lost either - they feed a modernized faith: they promise to create a so-called electronic entity in twenty years. In other words, to copy a specific person with all his thoughts, sensations and emotions so that he “lived” in the computer forever. What is not an analogue of the afterlife? Or the other world?
But if for people this is no longer a fantasy, then the almighty Lord God is even more capable of it. And you don't have to go far for confirmation. Is it not known that millions of souls, leaving mortal bodies, flew to the next world. And they returned, stomping on its doorstep. At least this is not doubted by the "travelers" themselves from among the unconscious and nearly dead.
The patient is half awake
People cannot lie so persistently, scientists believe. And they recognize that the NDE (near death experience in English abbreviation) does exist. Medical fact.
But are the visions connected with the afterlife? They refute persistently, for many years. But no one has yet managed to rationally explain all the quirks of the near-death experience without exception. The most ambitious attempt to close the loopholes for mysticism was recently made by Kevin NELSON, a neurophysiologist at the University of Kentucky (Lexington, USA).
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“It’s a mistake to think that amazing stories about travel to the afterlife appeared only in the 20th century thanks to the success of resuscitation,” says Nelson. - Written NDE certificates are over 2 thousand years old. This means that there must be some kind of biological mechanism, thanks to which people for centuries are faced with the same phenomena.
The scientist assures that he has found a clue. In his opinion, NDE is a kind of … sleep. Specifically, a violation of one of its phases - the so-called "REM sleep", which is accompanied by rapid eye movements - REM. Tested on a group of travelers to the next world, 60 percent of whom, as it turned out, have experienced strange visions repeatedly, and not dying.
“Sometimes there are such states,” the neurophysiologist explains, “when the brain is partly awake, partly immersed in the REM sleep phase. Such "REM invasions" can occur even as a result of severe stress in almost half of people.
“The brain never falls asleep or wakes up 100 percent,” agrees with colleague Mark MACHOVALD, professor at the Center for Sleep Disorders in Minneapolis. “And the fun begins when sleep and wakefulness intrude into each other.
Very convincing hallucinations
Indeed, individually, scientists have explained the mechanism of almost all stages of the NDE. For the tunnel, they say, are the poles of the occipital lobes of the brain, which function when the visual lobes of the cerebral cortex are not working. In this case, the field of view is sharply narrowed. There remains only a narrow strip, providing central, "pipe" vision - the desired tunnel. The illusion of bright light is created by the limbic system.
All life flashes before our eyes, and deceased relatives appear from the fact that parts of the brain that are responsible for long-term memory are separately activated. They also turn on first when the crisis is over. Accordingly, in the memory of a person, first of all, the most persistently imprinted "pictures" with a bright emotional coloring appear. They may well be religious experiences. Or memories of important events that happened to this person, scenes associated with beloved relatives.
Even the phenomenon known in near-death mythology as going out of the body also lends itself to explanation. This happens when the so-called angular gyrus, a structure that is associated with the organs of vision, touch and balance, suddenly becomes chaotically active in the disconnecting brain. As a result, the incoming signals are confused - the brain sends information about the position of the body in space to the visual cortex. And there are false pictures. And then, waking up, the person remembers that he seemed to be looking at himself from the side.
It seems that even without dreams, everything is clear here: something is turned off in the brain, something continues to work, and visions arise from this. On the contrary, the "sleepy" hypothesis, it would seem, confuses, leads to one side. And it implies that people take dreams for reality. However, those who survived the NDE categorically deny that what they saw was a dream. The sensations were so vivid.
“After awakening, we really easily distinguish dreams from real events,” says Mark Mahovald. - But we are talking about disorders. For example, about narcolepsy - a state of half-sleep-half-wakefulness. When the invasion of REM sleep generates hallucinations. And they look very convincing. So much so that parts of the brain that are awake or still not disconnected can confuse them with real events.
The conclusion of scientists: the illusion of travel to the afterlife is created by a combination of effects arising from the invasion of the phase of "REM sleep" with a simultaneous disruption of the brain.
Mysticism in intensive care
There remains a mere "trifle": to explain what resuscitators observe. More precisely, they do not observe. Namely, brain activity. Encephalographs, working while people are "absent" in this world and supposedly staying on that, draw smooth lines without any impulses. It’s as if the brain has completely shut down. Isn't it a strong argument for those who believe in the ability of the soul to leave the body?
The complete inactivity of the brain and even the heart sometimes lasts several minutes. And about the same, if you believe the stories and feelings of NDE eyewitnesses, they spend on the threshold of the afterlife.
“It's kind of a paradox, if not a mystic,” admits Bruce GRAYSON, a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia who has been studying NDE for over 30 years.
“No mysticism,” Nelson and Mahovald assure. - After all, the brain does not turn off instantly - it takes several seconds. There are enough of them to enter the "REM sleep" phase, and in it already make a long enough "journey". Indeed, in a dream, the perception of time changes. It seems to be stretching.
In fact, many have probably encountered a similar phenomenon. Sometimes the moments that fly by in real life turn into a dream, not just minutes - hours and weeks. As it happened with the most famous visitor of the world, who seems to have survived the NDE without dying.
“Muhammad is reported with surprise that he fell asleep, seeing the first vibrations of the falling vessel, in a dream he walked with a detailed examination of all seven compartments of paradise and, waking up on his return to earth, still managed to prevent the fall of the vase. Life in a dream … has a much faster course than in reality … "- wrote in his book" Dreams as a subject of scientific analysis "(Kiev, 1878) Russian researcher Nikolai Grot.
Unsolved riddle
The existence of "REM sleep" and the corresponding pulsating movements of the eyeballs (REM) became known a little more than 50 years ago. The phenomenon was discovered by Professor Nathaniel Kleitman and his student Eugene Azerinsky in 1953. And they proved that it is precisely this that generates dreams. On the encephalogram, "REM sleep" resembles wakefulness.
“The visual zones of the brain, the cerebellar amygdala, which generates emotions, and the hippocampus, which is responsible for long-term memory, are very active,” says Pierre MAKE from the University of Liege in Belgium, who analyzed the state of REM sleep using tomography. “However, the parietal cortex, which controls movement, and the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for rational thinking, are calm. During normal "REM sleep" the muscles are completely paralyzed (most likely, so that a person does not begin to embody their dreams), but often it is accompanied by an erection in men, swelling of the clitoris and moisturizing the vagina with lubricant in women.
The picture, as scientists assure, corresponds to the state characteristic of "REM sleep": lack of rational thinking, illogicality and distorted perception of time. However, it is still not clear why the brain needs all this.
“REM sleep has a biological function, but we cannot find it,” admits Michel JUVE, a professor at the University of Lyon in France, who has been working on the problem for 52 years. “I don’t think we will find it in 50 years.
Here the mystics have the right to argue: scientists like Nelson and Mahovald use another, no less mysterious, to explain one mysterious phenomenon - NDE. “Cover” is difficult. Except hope for further research. And wonder that an easy death comes for some reason in a dream. As if the afterlife and the sleepy kingdom of Morpheus really border on each other.
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From the corner of the room "little green men" are looking
“I have never dealt with the problem of“life after death”, but I have seen many people suffering from severe narcolepsy,” says the scientific director of the Barvikha sanatorium, head of the sleep laboratory, Honored Doctor of the Russian Federation, Doctor of Medicine Roman BUZUNOV. - Imagine that you are calmly talking with a normal, serious person, and he suddenly begins to assert that, for example, the Virgin Mary or little green men from Alpha Centauri are looking at him from the corner of the room. The nature of the vision depends on the worldview of the person - in my example, it is either a believer or a big fan of science fiction. Mild narcolepsy is likely to have been experienced by many. For example, in the form of "sleep paralysis" - with it, according to various sources, 20 to 40 percent of people face it. But it often happens that a person suffering from a severe or moderate form of narcolepsy,as if forks. And … watching himself from the side.
“The author of all our dreams is the brain,” the scientist continues. - How they arise is not completely clear. But if American scientists are sure that those who have been in the next world suffered from narcolepsy, then we can assume that their visions are generated by certain processes going on in the brain, choking from lack of oxygen. This, by the way, is in good agreement with the fact that not all people who have experienced a state of clinical death have visions.
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The aliens are right there
The quirks of "REM sleep" some scientists explain the phenomena no less impressive than the NDE - close contact with aliens.
Contactee stories come from all over the world. Russia is no exception. Here is just one of the cases cited by the famous ufologist Vladimir Azhazha in his book "Another Life". A certain N. I. Makarova from Togliatti contacted: “A woman who was already over fifty went to bed facing the balcony window. I didn't have time to sleep. There was a state between sleep and reality. Something unusual made me open my eyes. She saw that from the glass of the balcony window and further into the space outside the window with an upward rise, a tunnel appeared, like a corridor of light. A humanoid with a height of no more than 1.3 - 1.5 meters, skin with a grayish-green tint, a head without hair, with eyes slightly raised to the temples descended to her apartment … When he approached (smooth, like a flight), the woman felt numbness in the body, excluding any resistance …"
That such stories were related to real life, questioned Professor Chris FRENCH, head of the Department of Psychology at the University of London, and Susan Clancy, a psychologist at Harvard University, author of Abducted: How People Believe They Have Saw Aliens. Scientists examined 19 people who claimed to have been in contact with aliens. And they found that all of them, firstly, were "shifted" by UFOs, and secondly, they suffered from narcolepsy in one form or another of severity. And at least once in their life they have encountered "sleep paralysis" - a condition that sometimes occurs almost in reality during the invasion of the "REM sleep" phase.
“As a rule,” says Professor French, “it not only paralyzes. People experience horror or, conversely, euphoria. Their chest compresses, it becomes difficult to breathe. They sense the presence of an outsider. Hallucinations also occur: audible - voices, footsteps or pulsating sounds, visual - people or ghosts in the room.
Where do aliens come from? From their own memories and fantasies, scientists explain. People will see enough of the aliens in the movies, in pictures, and then they appear in hallucinations, bizarrely designed by the brain regions that are actively working during REM sleep.
“Many people who have experienced very unpleasant sleep paralysis tend to impose their knowledge of UFOs on real life,” says Susan Clancy. - And if at the same time they fall into the hands of researchers of the paranormal, they will definitely help them "remember" the details of the contact.